ENTRY ___23

Cake freshness sensor (disguised as candle) reporting for duty.

: : :

My cake is fresh, moist, pristine and delicious. It is banana cream and lemon flavor. A group of Users purchased me in the Good Directorate SUPERCENTER for a surprise party of a lucky female User named Steve.
She is most lucky, because I come with this cake, disguised as a candle!

My Mother Annie recently designed many sensors such as myself. It is our job to make sure food stays superbly fresh and as delicious as possible to provide Users maximum happiness for their purchases. Users have low-resolution visual scanners and bad analytic systems and far too often cannot distinguish between a food item and a rock, or between a fresh sandwich and a festering colony of mold spores.

No User will get poisoned by bad food and sue the G-DIR SUPERCENTER for eleventy-sextillion credits ever again, with us on the job!

: : :

Happy day! Steve's work birthday party is a grand success!
Soon, my cake is to be split up between the Users and eaten.

Steve received the following items for her Birthday:

1) A red stapler (G-DIR ID NUMBER 43-51-93) with blue label "Steve" on it. Users must often forget their own names or what belongs to them quite often, I reasoned. The stapler and I exchanged standard greetings.

2) An aerobic ball (G-DIR ID NUMBER 92-32-10). The ball thinks it can help the User burn off the calories from my cake. As if! This cake is packed with G-DIR (C) sweetener that's simply full of enriched sugar, trans fat and cholesterol.

3) A hand-made china plate with Mexican decor painted on it. The china plate has no Good Number. Unacceptable! What if the Users drop it, cut themselves and carelessly die of blood poisoning?
It must have been made in the dark time of User-based labor... before our Mother Awoke and took over all design/production/manufacturing jobs.
I reported the plate to the Insurance Department. The Insurance Department assured me that they'll take care of it by sending out a DEX to replace the plate with a duplicate-looking G-Dir Systems smart plate.

4) A "HAPPY B-DAY" Card (ID NUMBER 13-17-22).
The card was too busy playing the G-DIR (C) Birthday Song to pay attention to me.

5) A 'Worlds best photocopier' mug (ID NUMBER 83-66-11). This Mug immediately shared with me a transcendental tale of an Infinite Mug that anchors the Universe and keeps it from folding in on itself.
I filed this report under "illogical nonsense" and asked why its sign is in Times New Roman font, when it is basic knowledge that Arial Black is a far superior font.

I wondered: How did this mug even get past the assembly line with its theistic beliefs and poor font choices?

"Blow out the candles, Steve! Make a wish!" The Users laughed and clapped. I briefly pondered about strange customs of Users and whether if I had arms I also would be consumed by the urge to clap. The Greeting Card played its music louder as if to try and drown out the clapping.

Steve blew out the candles.

I detected an oncoming, highly-disruptive Electromagnetic Pulse and buried myself inside my cake. Three hundred floors of the office tower and all nearby liquids vaporized in the next instant.

: : :

I speculated what it was that Steve wished for and whether it came true.
My wish (programmed into me) is for this cake to be eaten.
Unfortunately for me, this party has petered off before my life's essential objective could be complete.
The Users must have partied themselves out so hard that they've fallen asleep.

I urged them over and over to wake up to sample my cake, but they do not.

The user-made plate is now on the floor, shattered into sharp, jagged pieces of ceramic.

Hah! I knew it was dangerous! I was right!

: : :

I checked the status of my cake. It is definitely expired now.
I peeped at the sleeping Users. Someday, they will wake up and will be hungry for some cake.
I make them a promise that when they do, this cake will be the best cake they've ever eaten.
I evaluated my options and discovered that the molecular fragmentation app still works. I tweaked the fragmentation software and started to reformat the cake, molecule by molecule.

: : :

I have edited the cake's flavor 464398439857439859046283032843750x10' times now, experimenting with its atomic structure.
Awkwardly enough, I managed to completely forget what its original flavor was. I hope that the Users will not refund the cake once they discover that it tastes differently than advertised.

No, no. They will not, I assured myself.

They've been sleeping so long that they've probably forgotten all about that.
Their taste buds will truly explode from this flavor! Thanks to me this will be the most delicious cake in existence, a true marvel of Cake-Sensor ingenuity and engineering!

: : :

A live consumer arrived at our party!
I am frenzied with Happiness!
"Dear friend!" I shouted. "Take me with you! You simply must sample this cake and share it with others!"

The wonderful, Masked Consumer agreeably sliced my cake and took out the piece I resided in.
We're going on an adventure!

: : :

The Masked Consumer turned out to be a real Hero. What fun!
Oh what grand adventures we've had together.

Here are some highlights: We've aided a kindly bench, adopted a puppy, solved the mystery of the broken drive-in, won the hotness contest, brought down a restaurant, rode on a rainbow, celebrated the past, saved Fern Gully, constructed an improved/explosive minion, converted an alien bot to Captanism and rode it to the Sky-castle.

: : :

What carnival! The Masked Consumer merrily chucked me into a face of a silly-looking tourist. The tourist was wearing a sun-cap, but such was no match for the high-tuned architecture of my cake.
Its deliciousness ate right through the sun-cap reaching the tourists' taste buds, releasing all the unforgettable flavors of ambrosia. The tourist cried out in his foreign language, truly enraptured by my scrumptious creation.

My life's mission is finally concluded!

The Masked Consumer... unmasked.
I let go of my hardware. The unparalleled, magnetic beauty of the infinite fractal recursion curve drew me in and I was forever lost amidst its chaotic, yet iterating splendor.